Merged Rep. Giffords Shot In Tucson

Skeptic Ginger said:
This thread has moved too fast to go back and check everything in the last couple hours. To summarize, it looks like the MySpace and YouTube videos have been confirmed as belonging to the shooter. And those pieces of evidence, plus his age indicate (note, I did not say, prove) paranoid schizophrenia.

There are a few too many politicians and other interviewees in the news calling the guy horrible names. That is a lot worse than those of us condemning the right wing rhetoric that encourages this kind of violence.

I maintain my original position, the rhetoric has the potential to trigger nutjobs. Now I'm sorry for using the noun nutjob myself to refer to people that might include some with serious mental illness. Regardless, of what kind of mental problems a person who reacts to the rhetoric has, and regardless if this shooter was or was not influenced by the rhetoric we are talking about, the rhetoric is dangerous and this incident is an example of why.

Whether this had been a nutjob right winger convinced the Democratic Congresswoman was a threat to his freedom, or if as it appears, it was a person with a mental illness who may or may not have been influenced by the rhetoric, the incident still illustrates the danger of the rhetoric. Like I said earlier, no one is saying the rhetoric would influence a rational person to act in this way. The danger is the rhetoric of constant fear mongering against your political opponent can trigger unstable people to do this kind of thing.
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As long as you note that all sides use such rhetoric currently, and have used it in all recent elections, and don't attempt to pin such use on one side...
 
TraneWreck said:
Yes, why, oh why, would extreme political rhetoric be discussed in a thread about an attack on a politician?

It's as bizarre as dicussing radical Islam in a thread about 9-11...
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It's one thing to discuss political rhetoric and it's overuse. I too agree that the political field has gone way too far in the rhetoric used.

It's another thing to jump to the conclusion that since this was a political event, it was politically motivated, and then from there to jump to a conclusion regarding the murderer's political leaning. ETA: These are all unevidenced speculation and, as such, falls into that realm of "political rhetoric" I mentioned above. Perhaps it's not rhetoric inciting violence, but it's surely political rhetoric and has no place on a forum dedicated to critical thought.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Schizophrenic affected by Ron Paul's rhetoric?
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Yes, among other things. I assume you're not blaming Paul though (I don't interpret you to do so). Personally I find many of his ideas even crazier than most of the Tea Party stuff, but I must say I have never heard him use any sort of dangerous personal attacks. And no matter how much I disagree with him, that means I still respect him.
 
Facebook page (before they took it down) showed Loughner 'liked' Palin and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, I don't know if he also 'liked' puppies and spaghetti and rainbows, so it's most likely nothing.
 
Denver said:
Yeah even the sheriff on the press conference just mentioned that all the vitriol of the people who say that stuff for a living, while it may be free speech, does have consequences.
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Yeahp.

50 million dollars a year, 8 year contract. Rush Limbaugh. 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Hate sells. This is the guy who says we are fighting the wrong terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. That Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the real terrorists. He doesn't say that off the cuff. He repeats it, in all his hateful splendor.

As the sheriff alluded to: Sometimes I wonder just what has happened in my country. It's not just the Republican radio haters either, although they rule the roost. Randi Rhodes, a Democrat, in the 2008 campaign repeatedly called Hillary Clinton 'an e-p-h-i-n-g whore, she's an e-p-h-i-n-g whore' on a public stage. She used the actual word - not 'e-p-h-i-n-g'.
 
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deepatrax said:
are you or are you not Fear Mongering when you claim that certain types of speech by Repubs may drive people to violence??

Given that there is absolutely ZERO connection yet to be made between this tragedy and Repub speech.
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No, it is not fear mongering.

The speech is dangerous. This is not a new concept, nor is it far fetched. So how about dropping the nonsense that nothing is wrong with the rhetoric and instead actually discussing the real issues?
 
I thought Rush would have been mentioned earlier than this. Looks like it's time to dig up every right wing bogeyman there is and blame them. Sad.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
No, it is not fear mongering.

The speech is dangerous. This is not a new concept, nor is it far fetched. So how about dropping the nonsense that nothing is wrong with the rhetoric and instead actually discussing the real issues?
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Start a thread on it if you want.
 
BobTheDonkey said:
It's one thing to discuss political rhetoric and it's overuse. I too agree that the political field has gone way too far in the rhetoric used.

It's another thing to jump to the conclusion that since this was a political event, it was politically motivated, and then from there to jump to a conclusion regarding the murderer's political leaning. ETA: These are all unevidenced speculation and, as such, falls into that realm of "political rhetoric" I mentioned above. Perhaps it's not rhetoric inciting violence, but it's surely political rhetoric and has no place on a forum dedicated to critical thought.
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I agree, which is why I've drawn no such conclusions. Every argument I've made is not dependent upon a particular factual outcome.
 
Dorian Gray said:
Facebook page (before they took it down) showed Loughner 'liked' Palin and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, I don't know if he also 'liked' puppies and spaghetti and rainbows, so it's most likely nothing.
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I think this might be an unsubstantiated rumor. There are plenty of links to the MySpace stuff that got out there pretty fast. I looked for his FaceBook page right after they first said his name. There wasn't one. And someone else made the same comment on the Twitter feed, lots of people were looking for it.
 
LTC8K6 said:
As long as you note that all sides use such rhetoric currently, and have used it in all recent elections, and don't attempt to pin such use on one side...
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This is how it should work:
Conservatives should report instances of liberals using irresponsible rhetoric. It's more likely conservatives will discover this for normal partisan reasons. Responsible liberals should then condemn the transgression and put pressure on the person using such rhetoric to tone it down.

Vice versa for liberals reporting instances of conservatives using irresponsible rhetoric.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
I have only so far made it to this post, and I predict that this will turn out to be the most Thunderous thing said in this entire thread.
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unfortunately, this is your most intelligent post in the thread.
 
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BenBurch said:
Now, to raise the meta-issue here; Is it time to repeal the Second Amendment?
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TraneWreck said:
We have crosshairs over her district, we have her opponent raising funds by having people shoot M-16's at her photo, we have sharron Angle and her "Second amendment remedies," we have Dr. Tiller's murder, this shooting did not occur in a vaccuum. This is an appropriate time to discuss the wrongness of politicians who glibly mention violence, regardless of why this assassination attempt occurred.
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Perhaps the “meta-issue” that many of you want to bring up, but are too cowardly to come out and say it, is this: Is it time to repeal the FIRST Amendment?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
No, it is not fear mongering.

The speech is dangerous. This is not a new concept, nor is it far fetched. So how about dropping the nonsense that nothing is wrong with the rhetoric and instead actually discussing the real issues?
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If anyone is outright advocating violence, then I agree, that speech is dangerous.

Did you have specific examples in mind?
 
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